How to Boost Linux Server Internet Speed with TCP BBR

BBR (Bottleneck Bandwidth and RTT) is a relatively new congestion control algorithm written by software engineers at Google. It is the latest solution out of Google’s persistent attempts to make the Internet faster via...

BBR (Bottleneck Bandwidth and RTT) is a relatively new congestion control algorithm written by software engineers at Google. It is the latest solution out of Google’s persistent attempts to make the Internet faster via the TCP protocol – the workhorse of the Internet.

The primary aim of BBR is to boot network utilization and reduce queues (that result into slow network activity): it should be deployed on servers, but not in the network or the client side. In Linux, BBR is implemented in kernel version 4.9 or higher.

In this article, we will briefly explain TCP BBR, then proceed to show how to boost a Linux server Internet speed using TCP BBR congestion control in Linux.

Requirements

You should have Linux kernel version 4.9 or above installed, compiled with these options (either as a module or inbuilt into it):

CONFIG_TCP_CONG_BBR

CONFIG_NET_SCH_FQ

CONFIG_NET_SCH_FQ_CODEL

How to Check Kernel Modules in Linux

To check if the above options are compiled in your kernel, run these commands:

How to Limit the Network Bandwidth Used by Applications in a Linux System with Trickle

How to Change Kernel Runtime Parameters in a Persistent and Non-Persistent Way

In this article, we showed how to boost Linux server Internet speed using TCP BBR congestion control in Linux. Test it comprehensively under different scenarios and give us any important feedback via the comment form below.